Steins;Gate

The eccentric mad scientist Okabe, his childhood friend Mayuri, and the otaku hacker Daru have banded together to form the 'Future Gadget Research Laboratory', and spend their days in a ramshackle laboratory hanging out and occasionally attempting to invent incredible futuristic gadgets.
However, their claymore is a hydrator and their hair dryer flips breakers, and the only invention thatĺs even remotely interesting is their Phone Microwave, which transforms bananas into oozing green gel. But when an experiment goes awry, the gang discovers that the Phone Microwave can also send text messages to the past. And what's more, the words they send can affect the flow of time and have unforeseen, far-reaching consequences - consequences that Okabe may not be able to handle...

For more about Steins;Gate and the Steins;Gate Blu-ray release, see Steins;Gate Blu-ray Review published by Jeffrey Kauffman on September 16, 2012 where this Blu-ray release scored 4.5 out of 5.

Steins;Gate Blu-ray Review

Is that a banana in your microwave, or are you just happy to be time traveling?

Two relatively recent quick casualties in the ever unpredictable world of series television were the American reboot of
Life on Mars and Awake. Both series featured a hero who had suffered an unfortunate car accident and
whose subsequent life was torn asunder as a result. In the case of Life on Mars, the hero suddenly found
himself transported back in time several decades, while in the case of Awake, the hero found himself shuttling
between two distinct realities. There's no car accident in Steins;Gate; instead, there's a horrifying collision of a
satellite which has fallen into a skyscraper and whose descent from the heavens may have precipitated a bizarre set of
phenomena that the series' hero, Rintarō Okabe, begins experiencing. Then again, Okabe's strange affliction (which
will be detailed below) may be due to his jiggered microwave, which this self-proclaimed "mad scientist" had altered to
help prove his theories on time travel. One way or the other, Okabe finds himself more and more confused as one set
of memories he clearly recalls doesn't seemed to be shared by any of his friends, and several weird things occur that
lead Okabe to believe he may either be time traveling or at the very least shuttling between two alternate realities.

Steins;Gate is another anime culled from a visual novel game and follows in the footsteps of Chaos;Head, both having been produced in their game forms by 5pb and Nitroplus. Though there are some fairly tangential
threads tying both properties together, there's no real requirement to experience Chaos;Head in order to wend
the thorny path that Steins;Gate offers. Steins;Gate is a smartly written, if just occasionally slightly
annoying, trip through several hoary science fiction tropes, but it manages to invest what might have been a clichÚ
ridden enterprise into something quite ingenious at times. Okabe is certainly one of the most unusual anime heroes in
recent memory, an obsessive soul who is prone to cackle manically at inopportune moments and whose theories aren't
exactly supported by anything approaching a traditional scientific method. When one of the timelines Okabe finds
himself shuttling through involves the apparent murder of a beautiful and intelligent female time travel enthusiast,
Kurisu Makise, a murder which Okabe himself may have committed, the earnest young man sets out to figure out what
exactly is going on.

Does anyone even use a semicolon anymore? One of my proudest moments in college was in my Film Theory class
when
my teacher (who now heads one of the biggest film schools in the country) asked us to write an off the cuff essay about
our favorite film. For reasons I can't quite recall, I didn't choose any likely suspect like Citizen Kane or 8
Ż,
but instead concentrated on Bob Fosse's Sweet Charity (ah, the vagaries of youth), and I utilized a semicolon
somewhere in my writing. When I got the paper back, there was a huge "A+" emblazoned across the top of the paper,
along with the somewhat funny note, "Correct use of a semicolon! Impressive! Bonus points!" While the patently
weird
inclusion of the semicolon in both Chaos;Head and Steins;Gate may not be much more than a
typographic
conceit, it actually helps to point out the slightly "fractured" structure of both shows. And in that regard,
Steins;Gate probably takes the cake, as the series is told resolutely from Okabe's point of view, meaning that
the
viewer is often just as confused and off kilter as the series' hero is.

Anyone who has ever dreamed of time travel has no doubt fantasized about going into the past and altering history,
either for altruistic reasons (think of that great old Twilight Zone episode where Russell Johnson, the actor who
go on to "greater" fame and glory as the Professor on Gilligan's Island, attempted to prevent the assassination
of President Lincoln), or perhaps for more venal, personal reasons. Both of these approaches rear their heads
throughout Steins;Gate in often fascinating ways. Okabe of course is trying to figure out why he has seen
Kurisu lying dead in a pool of blood, apparently murdered, even while at the "same time" Kurisu seems to be alive and
kicking and in fact ultimately joins Okabe's kind of geek-fest lab. On another level, though, a whole convoluted corollary
time traveling arc injects itself when Okabe's investigations lead him to the mysterious John Titor, a man whose own
time traveling expeditions may in fact be interconnected with what Okabe has been experiencing.

Steins;Gate is easily one of the most densely plotted anime to come down the pike over the past several years.
It's a different kind of opaqueness than, say, the Ghost in the Shell franchise, one less concerned with
philosophizing than with the intricacies that arise when one really begins to ruminate about the ins and outs of time
travel. This first volume gets us about halfway through the series, and by the end of this volume's episodes, the series
has begun a rather radical shift from a kind of goofy ethos to something that seems a good deal more dark and
sinister. I for one can't wait to see where Okabe travels next and what rippling repercussions ring out into various
timelines as a result.

Steins;Gate is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of FUNimation Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in
1.78:1. This is a stellar looking release that offers razor sharp line detail when it's called for, but which also doesn't
hesitate to craft whole sequences in a much softer look, with gauzy textures and fuzzy imagery brilliantly evoking Okabe's
quasi-dream (or is that nightmare?) state. Colors are often bold and extremely well saturated, but at the same time the
anime also exploits a lot of monochromatic elements which verge on a desaturated palette. Kurisu's auburn red hair pops
nicely and makes her character instantly recognizable. As Okabe begins to visit alternate timelines, there are a glut of
really interesting design elements brought to bear on this anime, all of which look great.

Steins;Gate features an English dub offered in Dolby TrueHD 5.1, as well as the original Japanese language version
in Dolby TrueHD 2.0. The original Japanese version sports excellent fidelity and some extremely appealing voice work. Most
will probably opt for the English language track due to the increased surround activity, especially in some of the segues
between various timelines. That said, there's a weird boxy quality to some of the voice work here, as if the recording
sessions have been done in different studios with varying quality microphones. That's a relatively minor annoyance,
however, in a track that does offer great fidelity and really wide dynamic range.

Episode 1 Commentary features Trina Nishimura (Kurisu) and Tyson Rinehart (Itaru). Nishimura kind of
leads Rinehart along since it's not only Rinehart's first commentary, it's one of his first major voice acting roles for
FUNimation. Rinehart keeps Nishimura in stitches a lot of the time, but they do manage to talk a bit about the science
fiction aspects of the show as well as Rinehart's history with FUNimation and the mechanics of being a voice actor vis
a vis the recording process.

Episode 12 Commentary features J. Michael Tatum (Okabe and lead writer) and John Burgmeier (head
writer). Tatum talks about this episode being the fulcrum where the show tips from its wackier elements into a decidedly
darker ambience. Burgmeier talks about what his job consists of, and why he enlisted Tatum's aid in crafting the English
version of this particular show. They also discuss how they decided to twist some of the original Japanese cultural
references in the show to those that Western audiences would more easily understand, including Doctor Who
and Star Trek.

Akihabara Map (HD; 1:32) is a quick virtual tour through several locations that play important parts in
Steins;Gate.

Steins;Gate is one of the most intriguing anime of the year, a wonderfully convoluted trip through the pretzel logic
of time travel and alternate realities. Okabe makes for one of the most unusual (and unruly) heroes in recent memory, and
the interlocking stories featuring him (in any of various timelines) and his friends and collaborators make this a novelistic
enterprise of really impressive depth and storytelling panache. This Blu-ray is a little light on supplemental content, and the
audio has some very minor issues, but the video is fantastic. Highly recommended.

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